


Time after Time

by sahiya



Category: Doctor Who, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Science Bros, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 00:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has this habit of becoming people's imaginary childhood friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time after Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yamx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamx/gifts).



> And this is it. The last fundraising fic. Twenty-five fics in three months. Whew. 
> 
> WARNINGS for vague descriptions of domestic abuse. Nothing overt or directly described, but, well, Bruce Banner's childhood. 
> 
> Thanks to Fuzzyboo for beta reading (not just this, but the majority of all the other fics, too!).

_It was dark in the closet, but also warm. The doors and the clothes muffled the noises that had woken him up: raised voices, his mother crying. Bruce made a place for himself by shoving his shoes aside and crouched there with his stuffed elephant. Someday, he thought, he was going to be big and strong. Someday he’d be able to stop his father from hurting anyone._

_That was when he heard it. It wasn’t a sound like anything he’d ever heard before. It sounded almost like wheezing, like Bruce had breathed when he’d had a bad cold. It was a weird sound, kind of creepy. It was loud, too, But not loud enough to stop what was happening in the living room._

_He thought about opening the closet to look and see, but before he could, the door to the closet opened, just a little bit. Just enough for Bruce to see a brown eye looking back at him at eye level. Then it opened a little more, enough for Bruce to see that the eye belonged to a floppy-haired man in a tweed coat with a funny-looking bow tie, crouched down in front of him. “Hullo, Bruce,” the man said._

_“Hi,” Bruce said, in a small voice. With the door open now, he could hear his mother sobbing. “Who’re you?”_

_“I’m a friend,” the man said, and to Bruce’s shock crawled inside the closet with him. He pulled the door shut behind him, muffling the noises. There was a quiet buzzing noise, and a blue light lit up the closet. “I’ve got a message for you.”_

_“A message?”_

_“Yep. From the future.”_

_“From the_ future _?” Bruce said. “Really?” That sounded like something out of his books, and even though that stuff wasn’t supposed to be possible, he really wanted it to be. Time travel would be awesome. If he had a time machine, he could stop everything bad that had ever happened to his mom from ever happening at all._

_“Really,” the man said, smiling. He reached out and rested his hand on Bruce’s hair. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said._

_Bruce swallowed. “When?” he asked._

_The man sighed. “It might be a while,” he admitted. “But someday, Bruce. Someday, I promise you, everything will be all right.”_

_Bruce nodded. “Will you stay with me?” he asked, as the voices outside got loud enough to pierce the walls of the closet. He didn’t know why he trusted the man in the bow-tie, but he did. And he was tired of being alone all the time, waiting for the world to end._

_“Yes,” the man said. “I’ll stay.”_

The next morning, Bruce woke up in his bed. The man was gone, and he wondered if he’d dreamed it all up. For years after that, he wondered if it had really happened; he remembered it too well for it to have been a normal dream, but then again, he’d been very young at the time, and very scared, and sometimes kids made up magical men who appeared out of nowhere and told them everything would be okay. 

Later, after Harlem, Bruce hoped the man would show up again so he could punch him in the jaw. Things _weren’t_ okay, not by any definition of the word. Things were so not okay that non-existence seemed like an excellent alternative to the status quo, but that was not an option available to him. But then New York happened, and the Avengers, and Tony, specifically. 

Tony had definitely had his own share of being less-than-okay, but he’d come out the other side. Bruce started to think that maybe he would, too. And maybe, he thought, just maybe, his magic man hadn’t been wrong after all. If he’d even existed outside a frightened little boy’s imagination. 

Then Bruce walked into his lab in Stark Tower one morning to find a large blue box parked in the corner and a familiar man in a tweed jacket poking around his experiments. 

“You!” was all Bruce could say at first.

The man was bent over, peering through a microscope, but he popped his head up and smiled broadly. “You must be Dr. Banner!” he said. “Nice to meet you, big fan.” He strode over and held his hand out. 

Bruce took it, gingerly. “You are?”

“The Doctor,” the man said, misinterpreting. “I’m the Doctor. Very interesting space you have here,” he added, glancing around, “lots of interesting whatchamacallits and doodads and whatsits, I love a good whatsit, you know. Glad to see you’ve moved away from the gamma ray experiments, possibly not your finest hour, but we all make mistakes, I should introduce you to some of mine - no, actually, come to think of it, better not -”

Belatedly, Bruce wondered if he should be running to notify Tony of the breach in the Tower’s security systems. “Er, JARVIS?” he said, tentatively, because he felt frozen to the spot. 

“Sir is on his way,” JARVIS replied, pleasantly. 

“Crikey,” the Doctor said, spinning around. “I’d forgotten about JARVIS. _Brilliant_ job on the AI, especially considering the time and place, wish I could put something like it in the TARDIS, but I think she’d be quite put out if I did.”

“Who would be?” Bruce asked. 

“The TARDIS. My ship,” the Doctor said, and gestured proudly to the blue box in the corner. “I wouldn’t want to do that anyway, unless I could speak to her, and that’s impossible. Well, probably impossible. Almost certainly probably impossible. But that isn’t why I came.”

“Er, why did you come, then?” Bruce asked. He thought he could hear Tony on his way down the hallway, and all he could think was that he needed to keep him talking until Tony could get here. 

“I need to see a man about a small problem of time-space dimensional mechanics - Tony, there you are!”

“Doctor, you bastard,” Tony said, bursting into Bruce’s lab with exactly none of the panic Bruce had suspected. “I _told_ you to use the front door, now the security protocols will have to be reset!”

The Doctor gave him a look. “Usually I’m quite fond of a front door, but using _your_ front door takes more patience than I have even on a good day, and don’t act as though you’ll be the one resetting the protocols.”

Tony pointed at him. “That’s not the point.” He grinned suddenly. “Good to see you. What do you need my help with this time?”

The Doctor bristled. “I _could_ do it on my own, only you always seem to have such fun. Like a kid with a chemistry set.”

Tony sniffed. “Please, if it weren’t for me you’d have a highly decorative lawn ornament by now. Anyway, never mind, you can explain it to me once we’re inside. You’ve met Bruce, right? Bruce, the Doctor. The Doctor, Bruce. Hope you don’t mind if he comes,” he added to the Doctor. 

“Of course not,” the Doctor said. He clapped his hands and spun on his heel, striding back toward the blue box. “The more the merrier!”

“Wait, where are we going?” Bruce demanded, even as Tony grabbed his arm and started hauling him toward the blue box. “Tony, what the hell is going on?”

“Big green, you’re about to get the shock of a lifetime,” Tony said, and dragged him into the TARDIS behind the Doctor before Bruce could remind him why that was a _really_ bad idea.

It was bigger on the inside. 

That was an understatement, actually. It was _enormous_ on the inside, and beautiful, in an alien sort of way. Bruce stopped dead, mouth hanging open, while Tony skipped up the steps behind the Doctor. There was a sort of console at the top of the stairs, with a large, glowing column that went all the way up to the top of the very tall ceiling. The two of them started circling the console, bickering amiably back and forth. It was only when the door swung shut behind him that Bruce moved, jumped actually, further inside the room. 

Then he heard it. The column started moving, up and down, and the noise he could really only remember in his dreams filled the console room. Bruce felt his breath catch, and for the first time since he’d walked into his lab that morning, he realized that this was really real. His imaginary childhood friend had come back to him. He hadn’t made it up. 

“Bruce?” Tony said. “Hey, buddy, what are you - whoa.” Tony came to a dead stop about four feet away, and Bruce knew why. Tony was good at a lot of things - _obscenely_ good at some of them - but he wasn’t great with feelings. Bruce didn’t know what kinds of feelings he had showing on his face right then, but he’d guess there were a lot of them.

“You visited me once,” Bruce said, making his way slowly up the stairs. “A long time ago. I was hiding in my bedroom closet and I heard - I heard _that_ noise, and then you opened the door and crawled in with me. You tousled my hair and told me everything was going to be okay. And I didn’t know why, but I believed you.”

“Ah,” the Doctor said, and if Bruce didn’t know better, he’d say the man looked _sheepish,_ shuffling his feet a little. “Well, this is a bit awkward. You see, the thing about the TARDIS is, it also travels in time, so things don’t necessarily happen in what you humans consider the right order. I, er, haven’t done that yet.”

Bruce blinked. “You haven’t?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “But I will do, of course. I have to, now that you’ve told me. We’re caught in a bit of a loop. I could do it right now, in fact -”

“ _No_ ,” Bruce said, before he could stop himself. He’d spent his entire adult life avoiding going back to that place, either physically or mentally. Too late, he snapped his mouth shut. But Tony and the Doctor were both looking at him now. “I mean,” Bruce said, in a more reasonable tone, “I’d rather you do it after I leave.”

“Okay,” the Doctor said. He glanced at Tony. “Tony, why don’t you take Bruce on a tour of the TARDIS? I have a few things I have to muck around with before we can get started.”

“Get started?” Bruce asked. “On what?”

“Repairs, of course,” the Doctor said over his shoulder as he headed down some stairs, away from the console. “Not many people I’d let touch the TARDIS, but Tony Stark is one of them.”

Tony beamed. Bruce shook his head. “You have the strangest friends,” he told him.

“Hey, it sounds like he was your friend first,” Tony replied. “Sort of. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

He led Bruce up the stairs. At the top, they found a long hallway. “There are bedrooms up here,” Tony said. “She’ll give you your own if we stay long enough to need it, but I went exploring once and there are a lot of old ones. Here’s the kitchen,” he added, opening a door to a small but serviceable galley, “and there’s a medbay around just in case, but not right now.”

“Not right now?” Bruce asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, we don’t need it. I’ve only seen it once, I burned my hand doing something I shouldn’t have. The medbay was right at the top of the stairs then.”

“Huh,” Bruce said. “So, how long have you been traveling with a magic man in a blue box?”

“Not magic,” Tony corrected firmly. “Alien. Everything in here is explainable, powered by science. It’s just science that we don’t understand yet.”

Bruce thought that in a sense, that was what Asgardian magic was, too. But he knew that Tony didn’t feel the same way, so he just nodded. “So how long?” he repeated.

“Twenty years for me,” Tony said. “Not sure how long it’s been for the Doctor. It doesn’t all happen in the same order for him. Once he came and he had a totally different face, and he said I couldn’t ever tell this him about the visit or let on it had happened, because for him it hadn’t yet.”

“And you . . . what? You help with repairs?” Bruce raised his eyebrows. “To a ship where the medbay is only sometimes at the top of the stairs?”

“Yep,” Tony said, grinning broadly. “It’s fucking amazing. But don’t try to take anything with you,” he added. “He’ll search your pockets on your way out. Though come to think of it,” his gaze grew shrewd, “he might not search yours.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Tony . . .”

“Anyway, go on and explore a bit. When we’re done, we’ll go on a little field trip.”

“Where?” Bruce asked. 

“Wherever,” Tony said, already starting down the stairs. “All of space and time, Bruce. Space _and time_!”

Bruce shook his head and started down the corridor. There were doors every few feet along the corridor. He opened one up and found, as Tony had predicted, a bedroom. It was neat and clean, and though he was certain, somehow, that someone had lived there once, it felt as though it hadn’t been occupied in a long time. He shut the door and moved on. 

Within a few minutes, he found a squash court, then wandered into the swimming pool, which was just off the library, for some reason. Both the pool and the library were beautiful. The library was all old wood and old books, and even though Bruce liked his e-reader just as much as anyone else, he could admit a weakness for the smell and texture and sound of real turning pages. The swimming pool, on the other hand, had a blue sky overhead and _felt_ very much like it was outdoors, but Bruce suspected that here, at least, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting sunburned. He thought about lingering in either place while he waited for Tony, but something drove him on. 

It wasn’t until the sixth or seventh room he visited that he found it. He walked in and frowned, unsure at first as to the room’s purpose. The others had all been quite clear to him, but this was just a room - a _huge_ room, with cavernous ceilings and a springy, green floor, with rocks and, well, _junk_ stacked everywhere. A storeroom, he thought, for broken things. And . . . rocks. Well, that didn’t make much sense. 

_Hulk smash!_ he heard dimly but enthusiastically. 

_No_ , he thought firmly. _No smash. We’re guests._

 _Hulk smash rocks!_ the Hulk replied, and unbidden the image formed in Bruce’s mind: the Hulk smashing the broken down old bicycle in the corner with the large rock to his right. There would be room enough for him to play here, Bruce thought, _really_ play. Even Tony had a hard time coming up with a space big enough in Manhattan.

“Ah, there you are!” the Doctor said from behind Bruce. Bruce turned, feeling instantly guilty about having been the slightest bit tempted to let the Hulk out. “Well, this is interesting,” the Doctor said, looking around with his hands on his hips. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“I thought it must’ve been a store room,” Bruce said. 

“A store room for things no one in their right mind would store?” the Doctor asked, poking at a piece of rusted sheet metal. It fell over with a loud clatter. “Well, maybe. I don’t rule that out. But I think it’s more likely that she made it for you. Or, well, not quite - it does depend on how you look at it, I suppose, but he is a part of you, so . . .”

“She made a playroom for the Other Guy?” Bruce asked incredulously. 

“Yup!” the Doctor said, looking distinctly proud. “Go ahead and use it, I was just coming to tell you that Tony and I would be a while. But once we’re done,” he added, turning on his heel to walk out the door, “Barcelona!”

“I’ve been to Barcelona!” Bruce called back. 

The Doctor popped his head back in the door. His floppy forelock fell down into his eyes as he grinned. “You haven’t been to _Space_ Barcelona!” 

That was, Bruce had to admit, true. The Doctor disappeared again, and he turned back to the face the pile of stuff the TARDIS had apparently created just for Hulk to smash it. _We stay in this room, all right?_ he thought at Hulk. 

_Hulk no leave_ , Hulk replied, sounding almost reproachful. _Good smash here!_

“Okay, then,” Bruce said out loud. He stripped out of his clothes, took a deep breath, and let the Hulk take him.

***

Hulk smash. Long time since Hulk have good smash. Too long. Little Bruce no like Hulk smash except in battles, and sometimes many, many days between battles. 

Big rocks extra hard. No break when Hulk throws. Other things break - splinter into tiny pieces - but rocks no break. Walls no break, too, or floor. Hulk throw all the breaking things at end of room and take biggest rock to throw. 

_Like bowling,_ Bruce think. Hulk ignore. No understand word ‘bowling.’

Hulk throw rock. Rock hit things, smash things. Hulk roar. Hulk hear - no, _feel_ \- sound like laughter in his head. Good laugh, not bad laugh. Not puny human laugh, either. Big, all-around laugh. 

Bruce think, _That’s the TARDIS. The ship. She think you’re funny._

Hulk not understand. Not understand _TARDIS_ or _funny_. But Hulk like the all-around laugh. 

Smashed things disappear. New, not-smashed things appear. Hulk pick up rock and swing in circles. _Smash smash smash_. So much smash! Hulk wish he could have such good smash _all_ the time. 

Hulk smash for long time. Bruce quiet. Bruce no say _no smash this_ or _no smash that_. Hulk happy. Soon, Hulk also tired. Hulk sit down in middle of smash on green floor. Not grass, not smell like grass, but soft to lie on. Hulk lie down, look up. Blue sky. 

_It’s not really sky,_ Bruce says. _We’re inside a ship. The TARDIS_.

Hulk ignore. Hulk no care. _Look_ like blue sky, then _is_ blue sky. Hulk close eyes.

***

Bruce woke up in the middle of the “smash room.” It looked like someone - possibly the TARDIS herself - had cleaned up a bit. The worst of the evidence of Hulk’s playtime was gone. He sat up and then held himself very still, marveling at how at home in his own skin he felt. Most of the time, there was a vague itch beneath his skin that he tried to ignore, but at the moment he just felt . . . good. Tired and hungry, but good. 

“Thank you,” he said aloud. There was no reply, of course, but there was, if Bruce wasn’t mistaken, the utterly bizarre sensation of the TARDIS’s mind brushing against his own, like a cat against someone’s leg. A very, _very_ large cat. 

After a moment, he stood up and found his miraculously intact clothing and dressed. Then he went in search of Tony and the Doctor. 

He found them in the console room, still bickering amiably over repairs. “Hey,” he said, as he came down the stairs.

“Hey,” Tony said, breaking off mid-sentence. “How was your workout? Big guy like his playroom?”

“He did,” Bruce said, and then didn’t know what to say. _Thank you_ , maybe, but he sensed that it hadn’t really been the Doctor who’d done it. It was the Doctor who’d shown up in the middle of his lab today, though, and the Doctor who’d landed in his bedroom all those many years ago. Probably. Bruce suddenly wondered where the Doctor’s will stopped and the TARDIS’s began. Did it matter, though? Together, they’d given him something he desperately needed, twice now. 

“Almost done here,” the Doctor said, from his position under the console. “And then -”

“Space Barcelona?” Bruce said. 

“Yup!”

“Does Space Barcelona have space tapas?” he asked. He was _starving_ , as he always was post-transformation. 

“Of course,” the Doctor said, sounding almost offended. He pushed himself out just long to look Bruce in the eye. “Stay away from the calamari, though. _Not_ actually squid.”

“Then what is -”

“Don’t ask. Better not to know.” He pushed himself back under the console. 

Tony came over and slung his arm around Bruce’s shoulder. “Good?” he said, uncharacteristically terse for once. But Bruce knew what he meant.

“Yes,” he said. “Good.”

***

_The little boy who would become Dr. Bruce Banner was crouched in the closet, clutching a stuffed elephant and shaking. It wasn’t difficult to understand why the TARDIS had brought him here, now; the voices penetrated the thin walls of the house easily. The Doctor had to pause and draw a deep breath before crouching down to peer into the crack between the door and the wall._

_Bruce looked back at him. “Hi,” he said, so quietly the Doctor almost couldn’t hear him. “Who’re you?”_

_“I’m a friend,” the Doctor said, and opened the door far enough to crawl in beside Bruce. It was a tight squeeze, but Amy had been right about him: he couldn’t stand it when children cried. Bruce wasn’t crying, but that was only, the Doctor thought, because he was too frightened. It was hard to believe that one day this little boy would grow up to be the Hulk - and yet maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe. A childhood like this would make anyone angry._

_The Doctor turned on the screwdriver, giving them some light to see each other by. “I’ve got a message for you.”_

_“A message?” Bruce asked, voice still small, but a little stronger than before. Interested, rather than frightened._

_“Yep. From the future.”_

_“From the_ future _?” Bruce said, eyes going big and round. “Really?”_

 _“Really,” the Doctor said._ You tousled my hair _, Bruce had said, so he rested his hand on Bruce’s hair. “Everything’s going to be all right.”_

_Bruce swallowed. “When?” he asked._

_The Doctor sighed. He didn’t want to lie, and he knew just how long this little boy would have to wait before everything really was all right. Years and years, and he couldn’t do anything to help. This little boy had to become Dr. Bruce Banner. “It might be a while,” he admitted. “But someday, Bruce. Someday, I promise you, everything will be all right.”_

_Bruce nodded. The voices outside rose, and there was the distinct sound - distinct to the Doctor’s ear at least; he hoped not to Bruce’s - of someone getting slapped. “Will you stay with me?” Bruce asked._

_As though the Doctor could have done anything else. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll stay.”_

_He waited until Bruce had fallen asleep and the voices outside the room had finally quieted. Then he carried Bruce out of the closet and laid him on the bed, covering him up with his Captain America blanket. “See you soon,” he whispered then. “Well, sooner for me than you, I’m afraid. Good night, Bruce.”_

_Fin._


End file.
